Cromwell gives update on proposed Taunton casino at Chamber breakfast

Thursday

May 1, 2014 at 7:38 PMMay 2, 2014 at 11:59 PM

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

TAUNTON — The $500 million casino and resort facility planned for East Taunton should be open for business by early 2016, an optimistic Cedric Cromwell told a gathering of local business people Thursday morning.

The Tribal Council Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe — which has a sales option for 115 acres of land adjacent Liberty & Union Industrial Park near Route 140 — was guest speaker at a a business breakfast, hosted by Taunton Area Chamber of Commerce and nonprofit Pro-Home Inc at Benjamin’s Restaurant.

The tribe and its Malaysian financial backer, Genting Group subsidiary Arkana Ltd., are awaiting decision from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs whether land in Taunton and Mashpee are eligible to be put into trust as an Indian reservation.

Acquiring and putting the land into trust is the tribe’s final hurdle for getting the project started.

The Mashpee Wampanoag already have revenue-compensation agreements with the state and the city of Taunton.

Cromwell also said he’s confident the Department of Interior will favorably rule that the Wampanoag’s legal and historical status is consistent with a 2009 Supreme Court decision — requiring any tribe seeking land into trust to prove it was under federal jurisdiction in 1934, the year the Indian Reorganization Act was passed into law.

Cromwell said information provided to media outlets by opponents of the Taunton project — holding up the Carcieri v. Salazar decision involving Rhode Island’s Narragansett tribe as proof the Mashpee Wampanoag are ineligible for land into trust — is “very false.”

The host agreement between the city and the tribe for its First Light casino and resort — including a 15-story hotel, restaurants and water park geared toward families — guarantees at least $8 million annually to Taunton coffers from slot machine revenue.

The city, which already has collected a one-time payment of $1.5 million from the tribe, has also been promised $33 million in mitigation payments and $4.8 million in annual mitigation payments.

Cromwell said it would be “catastrophic to the commonwealth” to eventually permit a privately owned commercial casino to open up in Region C in competition with Taunton’s First Light.

The compact agreement with the state requires the tribe to pay 17 percent of gambling revenue to the commonwealth, but only if it is the sole casino in the southeastern region.

If the gaming commission approves a commercial venture for Region C the tribe would be exempt from paying anything.

“It’s nonsense,” Cromwell said, adding that a commercial casino, which would pay nearly 25 percent to the state, would not be able to compete.

“They couldn’t treat the customers the way we could,” he said.

He emphasized the state would forgo $2.1 billion in revenue over 20 years, and that the southeastern region would lose out on $150 million in infrastructure revenue.

Cromwell said allowing four resort casinos in the state would essentially breach the gaming commission’s original rule limiting that number to three.

The commission initially gave exclusivity to the tribe to establish a casino in Region C, but eventually allowed commercial ventures to file applications after complaints that the land-into-trust process was taking too long.

The deadline for Region C applications, which also includes a proposal in New Bedford, has been extended by the commission to at least Sept. 23

Both Cromwell and Mark Forest, executive director of Delahunt Group LLC, which lobbies for the tribe, dismissed recent publicity about a plan by Connecticut-based Foxwoods to build a casino in Fall River.

Forest said the BOI is set to release its final environmental impact statement shortly. He also said documentation exists to prove that the Mashpee Wampanoag had a “federal relationship” with the government prior to 1934.

Cromwell, 48, assured those in attendance that the casino project will create 2,500 permanent jobs, a variety or part-time positions and as many as 1,000 construction jobs.

Tom Nicholson, general manager of Taunton-based Quality Beverage, said he can’t wait for the casino to open.

“We’ll be selling beer there. And it will help create jobs for us and other (local) businesses,” Nicholson said.

Thursday’s event was sponsored by Mansfield Bank.

Cromwell, at one point, complimented state Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, and Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr., both of whom were in attendance, as well as the Taunton City Council.